Sierra Popoluca
Sierra Popoluca, also known as Soteapanec, Soteapan Zoque, or Highland Popoluca, is a developing Mixe-Zoquean language of the Zoquean branch. It has 35,050 speakers who live in the southern part of Veracruz, Mexico. Sierra Popoluca has two sister languages, Texistepec and Ayapanec, both of which are severely endangered.
The word popoluca means "gibberish” in Nahuatl, and the name Sierra Popoluca comes from the language being labelled as such at the time of conquest. To avoid the derogatory connotations of popoluca, some researchers have adopted the name Soteapanec for the language instead. However, modern speakers do not seem to be concerned with the history of the word and simply see it as the name of their language. Natively, speakers refer to the language as Nuntajɨyi, which means "true word," and themselves as Nundajɨypappɨc.
Distribution
Sierra Popoluca is spoken in the following municipalities:- Soteapan
- Tatahuicapan
- Hueyapan de Ocampo
Phonology
Vowels
Sierra Popoluca has twelve vowel phonemes: six distinct short vowels with a corresponding long vowel for each.Front | Central-Back | Back | |
High | i iː | u uː | |
High-mid | ɘ ɘː | ||
Mid | ɛ ɛː | ɔ ɔː | |
Low | a aː |
Consonants
Sierra Popoluca's consonant inventory consists of thirteen consonants.Bilabial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | |
Stop | p | t | k | ʔ | |
Affricate | ts | ||||
Fricative | s | h | |||
Nasal | m | n | ŋ | ||
Approximant | w | j | |||
Unspecified segment | H |
Some words in Sierra Popoluca contain "an unspecified underlying segment, identified as the segment /H/." Depending on the environment it appears in, /H/ can alternate in three different ways, as described by the rules below:
In addition to its main consonant inventory, Sierra Popoluca also has a restricted phoneme inventory consisting of eleven consonants. These consonants are considered "restricted" because the only words they appear in are either ideophones, Spanish borrowings, or stylistic alterations.
Bilabial | Alveolar | Alveo-palatal | Palatal | Velar | |
Stop | b | d | tʲ, dʲ | g | |
Affricate | tʃ | ||||
Fricative | ʃ | ||||
Nasal | ɲ | ||||
Liquid | l | ||||
Flap | ɾ | ||||
Trill | r |
Syllable structure
Sierra Popoluca's syllabic template is CV. Words containing examples of each syllable structure are given in the table below:Structure | Word | Translation |
CV | 'alone' | |
CVː | 'firewood' | |
CVC | 'bone' | |
CVːC | 'where' | |
CVʔC | 'egg' | |
CVʔCC | 'it tires me' | |
CCVC | 'kid, adolescent male' | |
CCVCC | 'quail' |
Sierra Popoluca has phonotactic restrictions on both onset and coda clusters. For onsets, only the clusters /tr/, /kr/, and /kw/ are allowed. For codas, all two consonant clusters must begin with one of /p, k, ʔ/, and three consonant clusters are restricted to only /ʔps/ and /ʔks/.
Stress
There are three degrees of stress in Sierra Popoluca: primary stress, secondary stress, and tertiary stress. Words containing examples of each stress paradigm are given in the table below:Paradigm | Word | Translation |
Primary | nümnéʔ | 'He had said.' |
Secondary | nǜmneʔyájpa | 'They have said.' |
Tertiary | nǜmmàʔyyajtáabam | 'They are told.' |
Morphology
Sierra Popoluca is an agglutinating, polysynthetic language whose morpheme inventory is primarily inflectional and consists of roughly an equal number of clitics and suffixes, with no prefixes. The morphological processes reduplication and compounding are also observed in Sierra Popoluca.Sierra Popoluca has three major word classes: nouns, verbs, and adjectives.
Suffixes
Sierra Popoluca has 28 suffixes, all of which can be categorized as either derivational, inflectional, or valency adjusting. Nouns only take derivational suffixes whereas verbs take suffixes from all three categories. Examples of each suffix type are given in the table below:Suffix | Type | Function | Word | Gloss | Translation |
-i | Derivational | Nominalizer | wiʔk-i | eat-NOM | 'food' |
-ü | Inflectional | Imperative | koony-ü | sit-IMP | 'sit' |
-ʔüʔy | Derivational | Provisory | jawanh-ʔüʔy | fever-PROV | 'have a fever' |
-ʔiny | Inflectional | Optative | matonh-ʔiny | listen-OPT | 'should listen' |
-taH | Valency adjusting | Passive | suy-taH | lasso-PASS | 'be lassoed' |
Proclitics
There are 17 proclitics in Sierra Popoluca. Out of these, ten are used for person marking, three are used for valency adjusting, two are derivational, and the final two have other, unique functions. Verbs in Sierra Popoluca can take all proclitic types while nouns can take all but valency adjusting proclitics. Examples of various proclitics are given in the table below:Proclitic | Type | Function | Word | Gloss | Translation |
ʔan+ | Person marking | 1st person possessive, exclusive | ʔan+ʔakʔanh | 1POSS:EXCL+griddle | 'my griddle' |
ʔiga+ | Other | Complementizer | ʔiga+Ø+teeny-W | COMP+3ABS+stand-CMP | 'that was standing up' |
tan+ | Person marking | 1st person ergative, inclusive | tan+juy | 1ERG:INCL+buy | 'we buy' |
ʔak+ | Valency adjusting | Causative | ʔak+kuʔt | CAUS+eat | 'feed' |
ʔagi+ | Other | Intensifier | ʔagi+wej | INTENS+cry | 'cry a lot' |
Enclitics
Sierra Popoluca has nine enclitics, six of which are adverbial, two of which are inflectional, and one of which is a relativizer. Nouns can take all three types of enclitic whereas verbs can only take adverbial enclitics. Examples of each enclitic type are given in the table below:Enclitic | Type | Function | Word | Gloss | Translation |
+yaj | Inflectional | 3rd/nonhuman plural | tzaʔ+yaj | rock+NHPL | 'rocks' |
+tyi | Adverbial | "just" | yüʔüm+tyi | here+just | 'just over here' |
+tam | Inflectional | 1st/2nd human plural | yoomo+tam | woman+HPL | 'women' |
+püʔk | Relativizer | Relativizer | tum puktuuku yagatz+püʔk | one cloth large+REL | 'a cloth that's large' |
+nam | Adverbial | "still" | tzüüxi+nam | small+still | 'still small' |
Reduplication
Reduplication of the root is observed with both nouns and verbs in Sierra Popoluca, and can be inflectional or derivational. Though generally used to convey intensity or frequency, reduplication can also express "a sense of wandering around repeating an action" when paired with the ambulative suffix -ʔoʔy. Various examples of reduplication are given in the table below:Function | Word | Gloss | Translation |
Derivational | looko~looko | sound~REDUP | 'shout' |
Frequency, intensity | ʔaʔm~ʔaʔm | look~REDUP | 'watch' |
Ambulative | monh~monh-ʔoʔy | sleep~REDUP-AMBUL | 'sleep from place to place' |
Frequency, intensity | was~was | bite~REDUP | 'bite repeatedly' |
Intensity | ʔuk~ʔuk | drink~REDUP | 'drink all' |
Compounding
Compounding is observed in all word classes in Sierra Popoluca and is highly productive. Various examples of compound words are given in the table below:Structure | Word | Gloss | Translation |
N=N | mok=yooya | corn=pig | 'peccary' |
N=V | pooy=ʔix | moon=see | 'menstruate' |
N=N | tzuj-i=nüʔ | spit-NOM=water | 'saliva' |
ADJ=N | müj=pak | big=bone | 'waist' |
N=V | manük=wat | child=make | 'impregnate' |
Syntax
Sierra Popoluca is an ergative-absolutive, head-marking language. At minimum, the basic clause can consist of just a predicate, as shown below:At maximum, it can include an inflected complex predicate and up to three modified arguments:Basic word order
Word order in Sierra Popoluca is pragmatically determined for the most part. In transitive sentences, all six possible word orders are attested, as shown below:VSO
VOS
SVO
SOV
OVS
OSV
In intransitive sentences, both possible word orders are attested:
SV VSHowever, not all word orders are used with equal frequency; an analysis of over 4,000 clauses from various texts found the following distribution of word orders in transitive and intransitive sentences:
Distribution of Word Orders by Transitivity
Order | Frequency |
SVO | 72.37% |
VSO | 5.26% |
VOS | 7.89% |
OVS | 6.58% |
OSV | 2.63% |
SOV | 5.26% |
Relative word order
In terms of relative word order, Sierra Popoluca exhibits some structural features common to VO languages and some common to OV languages. A few examples of these structures are given below:- Possessor precedes possessum
- Auxiliary verb precedes main verb
- Complementizer precedes complement clause
Order of nominal modifiers
- Demonstratives precede the nouns they modify
- Adjectives precede the nouns they modify
- Relative clauses may either precede or follow the nouns they modify
Recordings
- from the Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America. Contains 148 archival files, including audio recordings and transcripts from a wide range of genres.